Mark Cuban And 500 Startups-Backed Switchcam Launches iPhone App And Director Dashboard In Public Beta

Switchcam wants to make it easier for events organizers to tap into all of the people that show up and shoot video to contribute their content and help tell a story of a concert or sports match. So it’s rolling out an iPhone app to make contributing videos to an event drop-dead simple. It’s also got a new cloud-based Director tool for managing all the video they upload.

We’ve written about Switchcam before: The company was originally called Veokami, and the whole idea behind it when founded was to help musicians bring together videos from multiple contributors and make them available for viewers to watch and enjoy. At first, that meant scanning YouTube for concerts and other events with big audiences who had already shared on-demand videos, and piecing together a sort of video montage of all that footage.

That was great for big events, like a Lady Gaga show, where there’s bound to be dozens — if not hundreds — of little monsters recording a show from their phones and uploading video files to YouTube. But what about events that aren’t quite as big or aren’t quite as coordinated?

Public Shoot Page (Post Event)Switchcam has been working on a whole new set of tools that will help solve this problem, enabling event organizers to recruit contributors and to manage and curate video submitted by them. There are two main parts to this solution: On the organizer side, the startup has launched Switchcam director, a new cloud-based dashboard for managing events and sorting through video submissions uploaded by users. And on the user side, there’s a new iPhone app, which will notify users of events nearby, as well as enable them to join those events and upload videos from them.

Switchcam Director provides a new means of video collaboration, a sort of crowdsourcing of videos from events. The dashboard provides the tools to publicize upcoming events, and to solicit videos from the events when they happen. Users can upload videos from multiple camera angles, and Switchcam’s technology works to sync all of those videos at the appropriate places, providing seamless transitions between them.

Users need only download the Switchcam app from the app store to find nearby events and to join as contributors to things they find interesting. After registering via Facebook, users can join various camera crews and submit footage. After that’s all been done, an event organizer can use Switchcam to create a landing page, and highlight the most interesting videos that have been submitted. All of that reduces the need for a single director to take video from dozens of sources and try to integrate it all into one big video. Instead viewers are ultimately in charge of choosing which videos they like the best.

Over the years, Switchcam has focused a lot on the music industry and concerts; previous clients include Lollapalooza, PBS, and Anheuser Busch. But it sees much broader applications for other conferences, events, sports matches, and meetups. The company has raised $1.2 million from the likes of Mark Cuban, 500 Startups, and Turner Media Camp.